


it spins like a wheel inside you

by cherry_darling



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherry_darling/pseuds/cherry_darling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you remember your first full moon?" Laura asks. Her front is pressed against Derek’s side, he can feel her ribs under the thin cotton of her Led Zeppelin T-shirt and they’re wedged together on a double bed in a tiny hotel on the outskirts of a small town in North Carolina. ; Derek and Laura before and after the fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it spins like a wheel inside you

We have been very brave, we have wanted to know  
the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes.  
This dream going on with all of us in it.

(RICHARD SIKEN)

 

When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.

(TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME)

 

 

-

 

 

The entryway was painted white.

Derek remembers this and watching his mother paint it is one of his earliest memories. He remembers the smell of the paint and primer and the way she hummed along with the soft music playing in the background – Chopin, he thinks it was; his mother was so fond of Chopin – and how the paint speckled on her T-shirt, soft and faded from too many washes and on her old jeans.

She had grinned when she saw him, her wide eyes dancing. “I’m afraid I’m not an artist,” she’d said, pausing to wipe some sweat from her brow, her teeth straight and white against the pink of her lips, “But I think it looks pretty good. What do you think, love?”

“It’s white,” Derek had finally declared with a shrug, and he remembers this when he and Laura go back to the house four days after the fire and the walls are charred where the fire licked up them and Laura just let out a shaky breath and said, “ _it’s all black_ ” and it’s wrong, everything is all wrong because it should have been white, clean and white, and their house is silent and that’s all wrong, too.

 _Silent like the grave_ , Derek thought but it’s not really _like_ a grave because people have actually died here, so he supposes that it really is one.

 _Thanks to me_ , he thinks. _Our house is a grave thanks to me. People have died and I knew them and it’s all my fault and I’m tired, I’m done._

Laura takes another step and the floorboard creaks under her foot; Derek can feel her heartbeat speed up, her sharp gasp that she covers with her fist.

Derek slips his hand into hers.

 

-

 

When Derek is five, he plays in the yard surrounding the house with kids from down the street. He runs barefoot, the soles of his feet grazing the grass and tearing on stones but the wounds heal (of course they do, all his wounds do) and he doesn’t pay them any mind. There are two boys, named Joseph and Kyle and three girls: Amber, Claire and Nicole.

None of them go barefoot and after three games of tag, they decide that Derek is too fast and they consider that an unfair advantage, so they settle on playing pirates in the front yard instead and Derek graciously lets Kyle be the captain of the boys’ pirate ship, despite his private belief that he’d be better at it.

Derek asks Laura to play with them, but Laura is eight now and she’s got friends of her own and she says that all of them are going to go play in the woods.

“Be careful, Laura, there might be wolves out there,” Uncle Peter says from the kitchen table, lifting his eyes from the book he’s reading and he offers her a wink, his teeth glinting in the light. Aunt Naomi is sitting opposite Peter and she scoffs. Derek can see her kick her brother under the table.

Laura just rolls her eyes and says, “Okay, Uncle Peter,” and leaves with her friends but Derek can sense her grin even with her back turned.

As they leave, Derek can hear the girl with the red hair whisper in a fearful voice, “Are there really wolves in the woods?” and Laura just says, “No, my uncle’s just weird. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything hurt you, I promise.”

A few years down the line and the girl with the red hair – Angela – will be Derek’s first kiss, in the closet in the hallway when she’s thirteen and Derek’s eleven and it’s a dare from another one of Laura’s friends. Angela will hover close to Derek for a few moments before the kiss, their noses almost touching and Derek will be close enough to count all her freckles and her dark brown eyelashes if he wants to.

Her eyes were blue, he remembers, so blue.

(And years and years later, Derek will kiss Stiles Stilinski in front of that same closet at dawn and Stiles will have dark brown lashes and freckles on his nose and at another time when Stiles is asleep, Derek will brush his thumb over Stiles’s cheekbone and try to count all of the freckles on his nose.)

But that is later and Derek’s not thinking that far ahead yet. On that day, that summer day in the Hale kitchen, Derek will get a glass of water for Joseph and then go back outside to play with his friends in the grass.

None of them go in the woods, and Laura returns with her friends a half an hour later because Sarah thought she saw a wolf and demanded they all go back.

 

-

 

Derek’s mother’s name was Diana and her skin was milky white and smooth and her hair was long and red and soft under Derek’s hands. She holds him in her lap and reads to him every night, his cheek tucked against her chest and eyelids heavy with sleep. His favorite book is _The Velveteen Rabbit_ and she has the warmest, gentlest voice Derek has ever heard.

Derek’s mother’s name is Diana and she shares her name with the Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt and Derek has never seen her get angry or raise her warm, gentle voice in his entire life.

(And it’s easy to pretend she never raised her voice in _her_ entire life, and it’s easier to pretend like she didn’t scream when the house burned down, but Derek has never been good at pretending, not really.

He’s always been a little too serious for his own good.)

 

-

 

When Derek is twelve, Uncle Peter marries a woman named Joanna and their wedding is a small family affair in the Hale’s backyard. Before the ceremony, Peter teaches Derek the proper ways to tie a Windsor knot and a bowtie, two things Derek will never forget.

“You’re pretty good at this,” Peter tells Derek with a chuckle, and Derek doesn’t think he’s ever seen Peter look happier. Peter lays a hand on Derek’s shoulder and it’s warm even through the layers of his jacket and shirt. “It’ll be good preparation for your own wedding,” he adds, smoothing down his hair in the mirror.

Derek just scoffs and brushes off his black suit. “I’m never getting married,” he decides, running a hand through his hair. The idea of being bound to one person for the rest of his life honestly scares the shit out of Derek; he’s afraid that he’ll get bored of them after a few years.

Peter just musses Derek’s hair affectionately, chuckling when Derek smoothes it down, scowling. “You say that now,” he says, “But you’ll change your mind. I did. Everyone does.”

It’s just a few years later when Derek is sixteen and meets the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen that he really does change his mind.

(The woman’s name is Kate Argent. Her last name means “silver” in French. Maybe if Derek had taken French, or believed more in signs, he would have been more cautious. But then again, he was sixteen and stupid and thought he was in love, so it’s hard to blame him overmuch.)

 

-

 

At the reception for Peter’s wedding, Laura introduces Derek to Joanna’s nephew named Will. Will is fifteen, a year older than Laura, and he has dirty blonde hair and wide, dark eyes and Derek feels his stomach lurch when he smiles at him. “Hi,” Will says, shaking Derek’s hand. He gestures up at the Hale house, grinning. “Your house is really cool, man. It’s kind of… creepy."

Derek just nods, dumbstruck and he holds onto Will’s hand for a few beats too long. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah,” he repeats. “It’s… it’s different. I like it, though.”

Laura just chuckles, her hand wrapped around a silver can of Diet Coke. She takes a long drink. “All of my friends are scared of it,” she says with a grin. “None of them ever want to spend the night.”

“That sucks,” Will says, and he smirks, ignoring her and focusing his attention on Derek. “Hey, man, wanna show me around?”

Derek doesn’t have to be asked twice.

 

-

 

He shows Will where the ivy crawls up the side of the house, the leaves shiny and green in the evening sun and Will just nods and fires up a cigarette. He offers Derek one, and Derek pauses before quietly accepting it.

Will lights up the cigarette, the flame from his lighter illuminating his face for a moment and he passes it to Derek and asks, “is this your first cigarette?” and he grins when Derek nods his head yes.

Laura’s eyes are on his back, he can feel them, he can feel Laura nearby and smell her perfume and sense her heartbeat but he takes a drag anyway and then coughs and hacks, spitting and muttering about how disgusting it tastes a moment later and Will just laughs, patting Derek on the back as Derek wipes the back of his hand against his lips and Will rests his hand on the back of Derek’s neck. His palm is heavy and warm against the skin there.

They look at each other for a long time before Will strokes a hand down Derek’s arm and then he puts his hand on the side of Derek’s neck, his thumb stroking over the pulse point there. The sun is low in the sky, casting long shadows and the light is soft and a warm golden-pink and Will keeps his thumb on Derek’s neck, his brow furrowed when they hear a sound behind them and Laura strides up, her smile wide and white and predatory. “Hey, Derek, mom wants your help in the kitchen. Can you go see what she needs?” She claps Derek on the back when he passes her. “Thanks, babe,” she calls after him.

Derek’s mother isn’t in the kitchen when he goes inside to talk to her so he grabs a can of soda and wraps his sweaty hands around it before clasping it to his overly warm forehead, desperate to cool down. His mother is in the front yard with Aunt Naomi and a few other guests, holding Emily on her left hip and idly stroking Isabelle’s dark hair with her right hand, deep in conversation with Joanna’s mother and it’s not until a few days later that Derek realizes that Laura was just lying to get him to leave.

Will leaves the reception with a black eye and Derek doesn’t see him again.

If anyone notices the connection between Will’s black eye and the bruises on the knuckles of Laura’s right fist, they don’t say anything, but that night, Laura kisses Derek’s forehead when he’s tucked up in bed. “I know you’re awake,” she whispers in his ear, her breath warm against his cheek, her long hair tickling his neck, and she presses her lips to his temple. “I love you, Derek.”

After she leaves, he whispers, “I love you too, Laura,” to the darkness.

 

-

 

Will was right, actually, the Hale house is kind of creepy. It’s not just the exterior of the house, though, Derek thinks – the interior is terrifying, too. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night because he thinks he heard people outside. He thinks he smelled gasoline, smelled smoke, heard a fire crackling, heard screams.

Most of the time, these dreams drag him out of bed and he stumbles out of his room and squints in the dark until his eyes adjust. The hallways seem too long, the shadows on the walls are too long and dark, and Derek is suddenly not at all as brave as he feels in the daytime.

Sometimes Derek’s insomniac father is awake, watching infomercials or old movies on Turner Classic and Derek will join him sometimes and they sit in a comfortable silence. Derek grows to like old movies. He likes the old black and white pictures and the costumes, he likes Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck and Lumet and Kazan. He likes when they show old foreign films, he likes Bergman and Fellini (he can’t stand Godard) but mostly he likes sitting with his father.

It’s funny, sort of, how much Derek is like his father. Their faces are all hard planes and sharp lines and pale blue eyes (Derek’s mother’s eyes are green) with dark, dark hair and thin lips covering crooked teeth, and neither of them are big on talking but Derek finally feels like he understands his father on nights like this, when he’s curled up under a thin quilt, watching Bette Davis berate Leslie Howard onscreen. Derek plays with the quilt’s loose threads and glances at his father, who is watching him out of the corner of his eye and they share a small grin.

These are the moments Derek holds close to his chest, the moments that only he and his father share and years and years later when he and Stiles are deciding which movie to rent. Stiles is championing _Blade Runner_ and declares it “the greatest movie ever _made_ Derek, come on, you’ll love it, you basically are Deckard except for the part where he might be a replicant” and Derek finds himself wandering over to the classic film section, picking up the case for _Night of the Hunter_ and wondering if he ever watched this one. He doesn’t think he has and thinks he could maybe convince Stiles to watch it with him.

He can hear Stiles walk up behind him. “Wow, classic film guy,” Stiles says brightly, checking out the case. He’s holding _Blade Runner_ and _Clue_. “Would’ve never pegged you for one. That’s interesting.” He looks like he wants to ask another question.

And Derek hasn’t told anyone about the late nights with his dad and he looks down at the case in his hands for a moment before he glances back up at Stiles and admits, “It was how my dad and I bonded. We both liked movies. And after the fire, Laura and I spent a lot of time watching them when we weren’t on the road.” He pauses, trying to find his words. “It was like a coping mechanism.”

A slow smile spreads across Stiles’s face. “Huh,” he says. “That’s funny. Not in a ‘hilarious ha ha’ way but in an interesting ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would like movies or even understanding how to operate a television’ way.” Stiles sort of punches his arm and he grins.

Derek is quiet for a long time before he says, “I know how to operate a television” and he lets himself grin back.

 

-

 

“Do you remember your first full moon?” Laura asks. Her front is pressed against Derek’s side, he can feel her ribs under the thin cotton of her Led Zeppelin T-shirt and they’re wedged together on a double bed in a tiny hotel on the outskirts of a small town in North Carolina. The people next door are watching Jeopardy with the sound turned up too loud.

“No,” Derek whispers. He’s staring at the ceiling, his eyes narrowed and burning with tears.

There are two beds in the room, but they aren’t ready to sleep alone just yet. The fire happened fifty-three hours ago. Not that Derek’s counting. Alex Trebek’s voice seems to echo around them in the bare room.

Laura exhales, her breath hot on Derek’s neck. “You were twelve,” she murmurs, her voice slow and deliberate. “I was fourteen. Dad took you, me and Peter out to the middle of the forest. You weren’t scared at all. Dad was proud.” One of her hands tangles in Derek’s hair, smoothing it down and soothing him. Her voice is gentle and soft. “Anyway, Dad didn’t change but Peter and I did, and I just remember how fast you were. You weren’t tentative when you ran. You just let yourself go, go, go. A lot of the time, during someone’s first transformation, they’re still hesitant. But not you, baby. I think you knew your calling from the beginning.” Derek can feel her smile against his shoulder. “We were all so proud.”

The moon is white against the night sky outside and Laura’s tears are hot against Derek’s collarbone.

(But we’re not at this part, yet.)

 

-

 

Derek goes to Beacon Hills High School in the fall, all long, graceful limbs and a strong jaw line and heavy, dark brows. He wears his leather jacket and cuts Biology to smoke American Spirits in the back parking lot with some of his friends and he makes the lacrosse team as an attacker, even though he thinks he should be midfielder instead but Finstock says, “You’re the most aggressive guy out there, Hale. People are scared shitless of you. No way in hell are we going to waste you on the midfield” and pats him on the shoulder. Finstock knows that Derek cuts Biology, knows that Derek chain smokes in the parking lot and is barely scraping by in World History but he never brings any of it up. Maybe it’s because Derek isn’t failing anything (yet, mostly thanks to Laura’s help with homework) or maybe it’s because Derek is one of the best players and he’s been known to cut his favorites some slack.

And Derek is definitely one of his favorites.

They compare him to Peter and Laura because Peter was the captain of the boys’ lacrosse team when he was at Beacon Hills High and Laura is the captain of the girls’ soccer team but everyone says he’s doing fine. “You could be like Philip Jeffries,” Finstock hisses, pointing at a pale, gangly kid who looks ready to pass out from fright in the goal. “Two of his older brothers were lacrosse captains and the third was the star of the soccer team but you’d never know it, looking at him. So at least you measure up to your family’s legacy, Derek.”

And Derek thinks _of course I measure up, I’m a Hale, we are all unstoppable_ and Derek thinks himself invincible and when he scores the most points of all the boys on his team, they all rally around him and chant his name but all that really matters is Laura’s face, shining with pride in the stands.

 

-

 

He’s eleven when his mother has twin girls, Isabelle and Emily, and as he and Laura look down at their new sisters, Laura nudges him and says, “Now maybe you’ll learn some responsibility” and she stretches out “responsibility” like taffy and smiles at him.

Derek doesn’t mind his new sisters and he feels proud when he helps his mother out with them but mostly he just sees them as semi-annoying but he likes when they’re older and they grin up at him while he’s holding their little hands in the line at the store, like they’re just so happy to be around him.

“We need to protect our own,” his father says one day when Isabelle comes home from day care crying because a boy stole her bear and slapped her, so Derek holds her close and kisses the top of her head, trying to comfort her. “They’re your sisters, Derek. You’ll need to look after them, the same way I looked after Peter and Naomi when we were kids,” and Derek had just scoffed and said, “Okay, dad, whatever you say” while smoothing down Isabelle’s hair.

Now, he wishes that he’d taken his father’s words to heart.

 

-

 

He meets Kate shortly before he turns sixteen and he thinks that she’s his dream girl. She’s so tall and beautiful with a smile that can light up a room, but she’s dangerous and exciting and _older_ and Derek can’t believe when Kate flashes him that smile and offers to give him a lift home.

He’s not a virgin when he meets her (he lost his virginity last year to Jennifer Shepard in the backseat of her Toyota Corolla at his friend’s birthday party) but he might as well have been compared to her. The first time is awkward – limbs and long hair everywhere and he knees her in the side and he can tell that she doesn’t actually come. But Kate is lovely and Kate is kind and Kate is patient and Kate teaches him new tricks that make him blush at first but she just grins at him, her teeth two rows of gleaming white and he’ll do anything to see that smile again so he does whatever she asks.

One night, he kisses her neck and he thinks, _I could marry her. I could_ and it’s a terrifying thought but he’s so young and so foolish and so, so in over his head but he thinks that he’ll never meet anyone like her for the rest of his life and he can’t see a future without her in it.

And it’s true: Derek never _does_ meet anyone quite like Kate and sometimes when he’s alone (and he never mentions this to anyone, ever) he thinks about her and sometimes he misses how her hands felt on his face and how her lips felt and he misses how happy he was then.

It’s a sick secret and one that he’ll take to his grave.

 

-

 

The night of the fire happens like this: Derek and Laura come home from school. Laura is eighteen, Derek is sixteen. Isabelle and Emily are four, turning five next month. Derek has a lacrosse game in a few hours and Laura is going to drive him back to school to watch the practice while the rest of the family meets them there for the game. Their aunt Naomi is due home from work in an hour. Peter and Joanna are on their way over after picking up their two sons and Derek kisses his younger sisters on the cheeks and announces, “Guess whose team is going to win tonight?” and Laura just scoffs.

“Please,” she says, opening two juice boxes and handing them to Isabelle and Emily, “Greendale has gone undefeated for three seasons in a row now. Your team is good, Derek, but not _that_  good.”

“Beacon Hills has this guy, though,” Derek’s father says, pointing to his son. “And he’s the best player they’ve seen in years.”

Derek just grins at his dad and goes to his room to gather up his lacrosse gear. He takes the stairs two at a time as he comes down and when he reaches the last step, his mother pulls him close, kissing his cheek. “I love you,” she says and Derek doesn’t understand the sudden, uneasy feeling in his stomach, but he tries to shake it off and squeezes his mother’s hand.

He can tell Laura is uneasy too, because when they get into her white Honda Civic, her face twists. “I feel weird,” she murmurs, putting the car in reverse. “Do you feel weird? I just feel like… something isn’t right. Something bad is going to happen.”

“I feel it too,” Derek admits, and they sit in the car for a few minutes, silent. The sky is getting dark and the air is cooling. “It’s probably nothing,” he says. “We’re just being paranoid.”

Laura just bites her lower lip. “Yeah,” she says, finally backing all the way out of the driveway and onto the road. “Yeah.”

Still, the twisting in Derek’s stomach doesn’t go away and by halftime, it’s like a heavy brick in his gut when suddenly, Laura swoops down at him. Her face is pale and drawn and she says, “Something’s happened. I can feel it. I feel like I’ve changed and we’ve gotta – we’ve gotta go home, Derek.”

(The score is 4 to 3, Beacon Hills. To this day, Derek doesn’t know who won.)

He and Laura are piled in Laura’s car and speeding home, running stop signs on their way and Laura is panicking, repeating over and over, “oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, what’s happening, something is wrong, something is all wrong” and then the smell of smoke and gasoline hits them, choking them and making Derek cough in his seat while Laura just grips the steering wheel, white knuckled and pale, her blue eyes staring ahead.

She’s not crying. Derek doesn’t see her cry until three days later when she breaks down in the hotel bathroom while brushing her teeth and no matter how much he hugs her, he can’t comfort her enough.

 

-

 

Laura says, “We have to go north” and Derek just nods and buckles his seatbelt. He’ll go anywhere she tells him to.

They stay in a little town in Washington and eat at a diner. The coffee is strong and black and it makes Derek jittery in his seat and sick to his stomach, but it also keeps him awake and the little sleep that he does get these days is plagued with nightmares. Laura licks the leftover pie from her fork and doesn’t look Derek in the eye.

There is a funeral that they don’t attend.

There’s nothing to bury, so they don’t see the point.

 

-

 

“Diana and Samuel,” Laura murmurs, clutching Derek’s face in her hands. They’re sitting in a gas station bathroom. Tears are rolling down Derek’s cheeks and his breathing is ragged. “You have to remember their names, Derek. You have to remember. Diana. Samuel. Emily. Isabelle. Naomi. Joanna. Michael. Daniel. You can’t forget this shit, Derek. You can’t. That’s the easy way out. We are not taking the easy way out, okay?” There are tears in her voice but not in her eyes and she presses a kiss to his forehead. “Never forget.”

 

-

 

All they have left are memories and they head farther north, staying for a few months in Seattle until they’re restless again and go east. They listen to Laura’s iPod on shuffle the entire way there, thoughts muffled by the music. The radio stations keep cutting in and out whenever they lose reception and they don’t like the news that much anyway.

They leave Seattle at six in the morning and drive until ten that night, stopping somewhere in eastern Idaho. They stay at a small motel with a dirty pool and a television with seven channels.

“You know, the sign said that they have HBO,” Laura grumbles as she runs a brush through her hair in the bathroom. The door is open and Derek can see her reflection in the mirror. She looks so, so tired. The bags under her eyes look black against her white face. “I was kind of looking forward to that. We could have at least caught a movie or something.” Her reflection grins at Derek, her lips thin and pale stretched over white teeth. “Or like Skinemax. We could have watched some porn before bed.”

The grin doesn’t reach her eyes and Derek doesn’t laugh. He just shrugs. “Maybe,” he says and he’s willing his lower lip not to tremble.

There are two beds in the room, but Laura sits down next to Derek. She wraps him up in her arms and tucks his head under her chin. “Derek,” she whispers. “Oh, baby.”

He breaks down against her neck, chanting, “I’m sorry, Laura, I’m so sorry” over and over again until he’s exhausted and Laura lays him down on the bed. He closes his eyes for a moment and then feels her wiping a damp cloth against his face.

“It’s going to be all right,” she murmurs but she doesn’t sound convinced and he can’t blame her. “We’re going to get through this, okay? We’re survivors. We protect each other. We look out for our own.”

When Derek’s face is washed, Laura lies down next to him on the bed and wraps his arms around him.

Neither of them sleeps that night.

They leave at five the next morning.

 

-

 

Neither of them finishes high school or goes to college and they don’t see the point in it, anyway. They go to Chicago first; they stay there until October when they leave to New York City. New York City to Annapolis, Annapolis to Nashville and Nashville to New Orleans in time for a Mardi Gras that they don’t bother celebrating. Derek waits tables or restocks library shelves and Laura tutors Chemistry or English. Her hair falls down to her waist but it’s never as sleek or shiny as it was in Beacon Hills. They can’t afford conditioner and she doesn’t brush her hair much these days. Derek cuts his hair, cuts off the annoying fringe that he would flick out of his eyes to look cool, that Kate said she loved.

From New Orleans, they go to Boston and eventually back to New York City. Laura gets a job as a secretary for a doctor’s office and works from two in the morning until two in the afternoon on the weekends at IHOP and Derek works part time at Starbucks. The rest of his time, he spends aimlessly wandering around, and most of the time, he’s half hoping that he’ll get lost in the streets.

He never does and besides, Laura would find him, anyway.

He isn’t a very good brother, but Laura has enough goodness in her for the both of them, he supposes.

 

-

 

“We need to build our pack,” Laura says as she spoons some macaroni and cheese into a small plastic bowl for Derek. “I mean, _I_ need to build our pack.” She swallows and Derek watches her throat bob. “I’m an Alpha and an Alpha without a pack isn’t worth anything, you know and that makes us both vulnerable. So…” She never finishes her thought, absentmindedly playing with her fork.

The fire was two years ago. Two years of wandering aimlessly. Derek is eighteen now and Laura is twenty and they’re orphans and they’re working dead-end jobs and neither of them see a way out. Derek wants to grouse, “Does this conversation have to happen _now_ , I’m trying to eat, let’s talk about this after I eat, why am I not enough for you, when we were kids I was always enough why has that changed, I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t ever want to talk about this” but instead he just says, “okay.” He doesn’t think he can change her mind on this.

But Laura never turns anyone. She has people she meets that they call “potentials” but nothing ever comes of it. Laura is cautious and Laura is wise. Laura is deliberate. Laura says, “There are some people you just can’t trust” and she looks at Derek with a raised eyebrow. “I only trust you, Derek.”

Derek is on the couch, his face mashed in the pillow watching television. He’s half asleep, a bowl of chips tucked under his arm. “Why do you trust me?” he mutters. “You shouldn’t. Look where trustng me got us.” It’s petty and melodramatic, he knows, but he can’t help it.

“Cut the teen angst bullshit,” is all Laura says, but there’s a hint of desperation in her voice, an edge that Derek almost doesn’t catch, so he moves his feet to let her sit on the couch with him.

He doesn’t see her cry but he hears her muffled sobs and he pretends that he doesn’t. Laura has enough goodness for the both of them, he rationalizes.

 

-

 

In time, Derek makes friends in New York, or at least the closest thing to friends he’s had since he was sixteen. The first friend he makes is a young girl named Beatriz who has a delicate, heart-shaped face and messy black hair that falls to her waist. Her parents are from Chile and she’s fluent in English and Spanish. She takes her coffee with milk and works at a small diner down the street. She has a nose ring and has a wide, pretty smile. Derek likes her because she’s funny and sweet and she makes him feel like he can be happy again and maybe in another life, he could have fallen in love with her but not now.

It’s Beatriz who introduces Derek to Johnny, the struggling musician who works at the same diner as Beatriz. Johnny plays guitar in some nameless band and privately Derek doesn’t think they’re any good at all, but it’s not like he’s going to say that to Johnny’s face. Johnny’s nose is crooked because he broke it when he was a kid and his has curly black hair and his eyes are large and green and Derek holds his hand for a beat too long when he shakes it.

Derek isn’t really sure when he and Johnny start formally going out, but one day while they’re wandering from the diner to the movie theater to meet up with Beatriz and Johnny takes his hand. It’s almost November and the air is bitingly cold and Derek isn’t wearing gloves but Johnny is and Johnny laces their fingers together and he just smiles at Derek. He says, “We can take our time. Beatriz isn’t going anywhere.”

For the first time in a long time, Derek smiles back. He wonders if it reaches his eyes.

Derek turns twenty a month later.

 

-

 

The rest of Derek’s time in New York passes in relative normalcy. He spends his time working and hanging out with Johnny and Beatriz and their friends. He goes to Johnny’s shows and kisses him under a streetlight and he goes to the movies and buys a leather jacket from the flea market for twenty dollars. He makes Laura pasta when she’s too tired to cook and alphabetizes his DVD collection and gets a driver’s license for the state of New York.

He has distractions.

Two and a half years pass like this and he doesn’t tell Johnny that he’s a werewolf and it’s not exactly happiness but he feels himself adjusting again. Sometimes he wakes up and feels like there’s fire in his veins and he has to splash cold water on his face and wait for Kate Argent’s laughter to leave his ears and his mind but there isn’t the crushing, painful loneliness that was there once.

But putting an entire country between themselves and their problems doesn’t help anything because pretty soon, a spiral shows up on a dead deer in Beacon Hills and Laura’s face goes white. Laura says, “Something’s wrong, Derek. Something’s… really, really wrong. I have to go home,” and Derek doesn’t need to ask her where “home” is.

Laura kisses him on the cheek the day she leaves and says, “I’ll be home soon, okay? I promise.” She smiles. “It’s probably nothing,” she says, more to herself than to him and chews on her thumbnail. “I love you,” she repeats and kisses his cheek again.

She texts him at least twice a day, telling him where she’s going and what the weather’s like where she’s at and sometimes she sends him pictures of people at the truck stops she stops at. Derek’s personal favorite is a photo of a group of people who got off a Greyhound bus to eat at an Arby’s in Colorado and Laura’s caption reads: _I’m almost tempted to ditch my car here and join them. Do you think they would notice a werewolf? I highly doubt it._

After three days, she sends him a picture of a black Camaro in a parking lot. _Traded in the Civic for this bad boy. Got a hell of a deal. I’m traveling in style now!_ and she sends him pictures of the mountains and fields she’s driving by.

This is the last text Laura sends him: _finally at Beacon Hills. I drove by the high school today and saw Coach Finstock making the lacrosse team run suicides. How is that loony still employed? xx Laura_

Derek texts back, _I always thought he had some kind of dirt on the principal_ and goes to sleep.

Laura doesn’t text back the next day, or the day after that or the day after that and it’s enough to make Derek worry.

On the fifth day with no word from Laura, that old, cold heavy sense of guilt settles into Derek’s stomach so he heads back out west.

He leaves Johnny a note that reads: _went back to California. Family emergency. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll call you_ and maybe Derek didn’t love Johnny – maybe he’s too damaged to ever love anyone again, maybe Johnny and Beatriz were just distractions that he called friends – but he will miss him and he tells himself that if everything ends up all right in California that he’ll come right back and tell him the truth.

It takes him thirteen hours, two planes and one layover to get to Beacon Hills.

It takes him about fifteen minutes to find the upper half of Laura’s body in the woods.

 

-

 

“Diana and Samuel,” Derek murmurs to himself as he digs a grave for Laura outside the burned up remains of their house. The earth is cool under his hands, embedded under his fingernails and it smells familiar, like days spent out in the sun. “Diana and Samuel and Naomi and Isabelle and Emily and Joanna and Michael and Daniel. Diana, Samuel, Naomi, Emily, Isabelle, Joanna, Michael, Daniel. _Laura_. Diana, Samuel, Naomi, Emily, Isabelle, Joanna, Michael, Daniel. Laura.”

She’s another name to add to the list of the dead.

It is a long list.

 

-

 

After Laura dies, Derek finally gives her the credit she deserves.

After he buries her and puts the spiraled rope woven with wolfsbane over her grave, he presses his cheek to the ground and talks to her. “I’m so sorry, Laura,” he murmurs. “I should have treated you better. I shouldn’t have been such a pain to deal with. I should have respected you more. I should have been there for you the way you’ve always been there for me. If I could go back, I would have done things differently. I would have said goodbye. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and his eyes burn with tears. “You were the best sister I could have asked for. I miss you.”

He hopes she understands.

 

-

 

From as early as Derek can remember, the house was always too large. That hasn’t changed, he decides, as he walks through the remains. The floorboards creak under his feet and he can still smell the smoke. The sounds echo and the house is silent and _that’s_ different because in his memories, the house was always loud and nicely crammed but now it’s so quiet and feels so empty.

He doesn’t think the house was ever empty when he was a kid. First it had been his parents and him and Laura and Peter and Naomi, but then Peter had married Joanna and so she joined them. A year later, Joanna had a boy named Daniel, and a few years after that, his mother had Emily and Isabelle and a year later, Joanna had Michael. His father always said, “Wolves travel in packs. We have our strength in numbers.”

And now, Derek thinks, opening the door to his old room, now there’s no one. Only him.

Everything in the room is burned beyond recognition and he closes the door.

 

-

 

Killing Peter the first time is easy. He’s running on anger and adrenaline and it makes _sense_. Peter killed Laura and it’s almost too easy to tear his throat out with his claws, and he relishes in the hot blood coating his hands and drying under his nails. He only regrets in not getting to kill Kate himself, but getting to finish off Peter is enough for him.

Killing Peter the second time is harder because Peter is the only family he has left and Derek is so, so tired and so lonely that Peter is almost a welcome relief to the constant ache in his chest.

It’s only when Peter bites Lydia Martin for the second time and has Stiles’s head cradled in his hands, ready to snap his neck that Derek rips out his throat again – this time with his teeth and the blood is hot on his face – and he burns the body. There are casualties again: a waiter from the Stuffed Olive, a woman who was jogging at dawn, Scott’s Algebra II teacher and two of the Alpha pack but Lydia and Stiles and the rest of Derek’s pack are alive and, as far as Derek’s concerned, that’s all that really matters in the end.

After Derek pours Peter’s ashes into a small creek that runs through the river, all that’s left is the clean up. Lydia is in the hospital but they think that since Peter is gone, she’ll be fine. Or at least, better than she was.

Hopefully.

Stiles has blood spattered on his face and neck and shirtfront and he is white as a sheet but says, “I’m fine. Just psychologically damaged, but nothing too bad” and Scott volunteers to stay the night with him just to make sure.

The night Derek kills Peter the second time, he doesn’t sleep. It’s summer and he breathes in the warm night air and circles the Hale house, his body humming and his pulse quick and pounding.

The next night, he falls asleep but he sleeps lightly and he has a vivid dream that his parents and sisters were curled up in the bed with him. His head was in his mother’s lap as she stroked his hair and Laura was pressed against his back, her arm slung over his waist. Emily and Isabelle were against his stomach and his father was next to Laura.

He wakes up drenched in cold sweat, heart racing.

 

-

 

Derek never does go back to New York. He tells Johnny over the phone, “I have unfinished business here, I’m sorry, I’ll call you back” and thinks Johnny understands all the unsaid words.

He lies down on his bare mattress in his old room and turns Laura’s iPod over and over in his hands.

(He never does call Johnny back.)

 

-

 

Time passes and Derek learns. Time passes and Derek tries to be a better Alpha and a better person. Time passes and Derek thinks he’s learned his lesson. Time passes and Derek thinks he’s paid enough for his sins.

He still drives the black Camaro that he found parked outside the house when he returned, the one Laura sent him a picture of, the one that still smells like her, and he still keeps the iPod at the bottom of his dresser but gradually, he learns to let go of the hurt, the guilt, the anger, and he lets go of Kate and of Peter and maybe he begins to heal.

One day, he’s sitting on the porch steps and he hears the familiar rumble of Stile’s Jeep and he glances up. The Jeep crawls into view a few minutes later and rumbles to a halt in front of the house. Stiles is slow getting out, his hands playing with the strings of his hoodie. The air is cool around them and Stiles’s jeans have a hole in the knee. He smells different, Derek thinks, like he used a different kind of soap than he usually does.

“Stiles,” Derek greets with a slight nod of his head.

“Hey, Derek,” Stiles says. He chews on his left pinky nail for a moment before he puts his hands in his pockets.

There’s a pause and finally Derek says, “You can come sit down if you want to, you know. You don’t just have to stand there,” and he pats the spot next to him.

After Stiles settles down, perched on the very edge of the step and reeking of nerves. The corner of Derek’s mouth quirks up in a very small smile. “You okay?” he asks, lightly touching Stiles’s arm. In all honesty, he wouldn’t call Stiles his friend, but there’s something about the kid that’s gotten under his skin. Maybe it’s the fact that Stiles treaded water for two hours while keeping Derek afloat in eight feet of water, or maybe it’s because Derek thinks there’s a dark side to Stiles that he buries under all of his humor and sarcasm and maybe Derek wants to help him, to tell Stiles that it’s okay to let go of the past sometimes.

But instead he just says, “What’s up?” and Stiles sighs and mutters, “Scott and Allison decided to go on a double date with Lydia and Jackson, and Danny is on a date with some guy on the swim team who has the nicest six pack ever and Erica, Boyd and Isaac are probably out eating rabbits or something and I am totally alone on a Saturday night."

Derek pauses, tapping his fingers against his thigh. He has a million questions that he wants to ask, like “so you thought you could come hang out with me?” and “do you want to talk about your mom sometime?” and “why didn’t you just tag along, I doubt they’d mind” and “why are you checking out Danny’s date?” and “you look like you’re freezing, are you cold?” and “why are you so nervous when you’re around me?” but he finally settles on, “I don’t really think Erica, Isaac and Boyd eat rabbits.”

Stiles stares at Derek for a moment before he grins widely. “I mean, you never know,” he says, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “They might and maybe you’ve just never seen them.”

Shaking his head, Derek just says, “Sometimes, I have no idea what to do with you, Stiles” and Stiles’s grin grows wider. Derek can hear Stiles’s heart rate go down, he can smell Stiles relaxing.

“That makes two of us,” Stiles murmurs, leaning back on his hands. He stretches his lets out in front of him, crossing his ankles.

The silence that follows is comfortable.

 

 

 

end.


End file.
